I was able to visit my one and only Bundesliga game for the closed 2016/2017 season.

Obviously, I brought my camera and took some footage of the goalkeeper warm-up of both teams.

Unfortunately it is not the entire warm-up as I focused on the teams later on. However, please enjoy the two videos below, the first one shows the FC Schalke and the second one the Eintracht
Frankfurt goalkeeper warm-up.

As already mentioned in previous two blog posts, I was able to visit the UEFA Champions League semi-final BVB against AS Monaco. Furthermore, I have posted the two pre-match warm-up of Dortmund
HERE and of Monaco HERE.

Nevertheless, I was able to take some footage from the goalkeepers warm-up as well. If interested, please check out the video below.

Chapter 4 of the UEFA Club Footballing Landscape was about the supporters.

Over 170 mio people went to European league matches in 2015/2016 with 55 mio in England and Germany alone. Overall there was a significant increase and 14 leagues achieved their best attendance
figures in more than 10 years.

The second big part of the "The European Club Footballing Landscape", from the 2014/2015 season, was about the players.

The average age of first-team squads (in January 2016) can be seen in the following maps below. It seems that the talent-importing leagues tend to have a higher average first team squad compared
to talent exporters (such as Netherlands and the Balkan countries).

Whilst on summer break it happened that the French National Football team held a short preparation camp at the "Stubaital" (Austria) for the European Championship 2016 in France. Coincidentally
the camp was a 30-minute drive away and I was able to tape a session from outside the training ground (and the fence - obviously I missed to book a ticket beforehand).

The Al-Kass tournament was played at Doha last week. Its an international tournament in which U-16 age group teams of several top clubs faced-off in a 10-day competition.

Unfortunately I was not able to attend the games from this year. However, I have not had released the videos from last years tournament. Clicking on the provided links below will give you the
warm-up procedures of the selected team.

There were already many penalties during the ongoing 2014 FIFA World Cup at Brazil.

With the second round/knock-out stage around the corner, it seems possible that following matches will come to a conclusion with a penalty shoot-out.

As a consequence I have taken some time to scoop through the scientific literature about penalty taking in football. The first paragraph shows some information for the penalty taker, while the
second parts deals with important considerations for the goalkeeper.

Considering that a penalty shot only needs about 0.2 to 0.6 seconds (4) for the 11 meters from the spot to the goal, the goalkeeper has very limited chance to react and jump to save the shoot,
not even considering the reaction time.

As a result the goalkeeper need to start diving prior to the shot (however, needs to wait as long as possible) to not show the penalty taker the dive direction.

So what can the goalkeeper and the penalty taker do increase the chance of success?

This is a special post with regards to the FIFA World Cup 2014 as its different environmental conditions at each stadium (temperature and humidity) were fairly often debated in the press already.

Generally, Brazil’s average daily temperature during this time of the year is warmer than many other countries. Research from international matches in Qatar under hot environment significant
favored the Qatari team showing the influence/advantage of heat accustomized teams (1 - see references below).

In sport science terms, getting accustomized to a hot (and/or humid) environment is called heat acclimation, which was a topic of interest for many years for exercise physiologists, especially
for sporting events such as Tour de France or for military purposes.

Before the UEFA Champions League Quarterfinal against Manchester United tonight, I would like to post two more training sessions from Pep Guardiola and his Bayern. The footage was taken at their
VW Winter training camp in Doha 2014.

With Real Madrid showing a true Champions League class last night, I had NO look at some game stats/performance indicator or any other time motion analysis, neither do I want to try explain why
they just punished Schalke.

I just feel that this is a good opportunity to post the Real Madrid warm-up against Paris St. Germain that I have received from Joao Marques earlier in the year here in Doha.

Having the UEFA Champions league best of 16 around the corner, I would like to post some more or less random thoughts, however still crucial for coaches, sport scientists and/or S&C
staff.

So how important is the physical component in football – which can also be rephrased into: can physical components be game decisive?
With that question I don’t mean if one single sprint and a finish can decide over winning and losing (and we all know the answer to this question). I meant if aerobic/anaerobic endurance, speed
(in general) or strength will win games and/or Championships. This question is a little bit harder to answer in my opinion.

On Tuesday, the expected entry of the insurer Allianz SE with the German record champions became public.

FC Bayern München had already announced its intention to bring a third major partner on board besides the shareholders Adidas and Audi. Allianz secured 8.33 percent of FC Bayern München
AG who puts ~110 million euros on the table.

Part of the deal obviously were the naming rights to the stadium until 2041. As a result, the shares of Adidas and Audi will diminish from 9.09 to 8.33%.

Attending most of the Al-Kass (U16-tournament) tournament which hosts nations from different continents, I have made a compilation of pre-match warm-up from different teams around the world.

Unlike professional teams, the staff of these teams (mostly) inherent the same nationality from which the team actually is. As a result, there could be different approaches in football playing
styles and therefore warm-up procedures.

Please click on individual team logo to open the video or visit my youtube channel to see the videos.

This might be a predominantly special topic for US coaches, as I presume (with all respect) that not many (European, Asian etc.) coaches will know Anson Dorrance.

So why is that worth a special "research in football" topic? To quote Wikipedia: "He is currently the head coach of the
women's soccer program at the University of North Carolina with one of the most successful coaching records in the history of athletics. His team won 21 of the 31 NCAA Women's Soccer
Championships. The Tar Heels' record under Dorrance is 719-39-24 (equals an impressive .935 winning percentage) over 33 seasons as of September 9, 2011. He has led his team to a 101-game unbeaten
streak and coached 13 different women to a total of 20 National Player of the Year awards. The NCAA has recognized Dorrance as the Women's Soccer Coach of the Year seven times (1982, 1986, 1997,
2000, 2001, 2003 and 2006) and as the Men's Soccer Coach of the Year in 1987. On March 10, 2008 Dorrance was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame.